Error in Diagnosis (26 page)

Twenty minutes after his meeting with Special Agent Westenson and Inspector Barbier, Jack was on his way home. Even though he told Mike he'd call him in the morning, he thought about placing a call now to check on him. He was just about to make that call when his phone tang.

“What the devil was all that cloak-and-dagger stuff about?” Madison asked him.

“Nothing, just routine.”

“C'mon, Jack. The FBI and Canadian police hunt you down to speak with you, and you tell me it's nothing but routine stuff. Are you kidding? I thought you were done trying to con me.”

“I'm not trying to con anybody. I was instructed not to discuss the details.”

“That's fine. You can skip the details and just give me the highlights.”

There was no doubt in Jack's mind Madison would persist until he gave her some morsel of information.

“Suffice it to say,” he began with caution, “that the government's concerned the scientific community may be operating under a rather large misconception in its efforts to cure GNS.”

“That's what I assumed. So, how does all that affect us?”

“Good question. As soon as I have an answer, I'll let you know,” he said. “I was thinking of giving Mike a call. Do you mind if I get back to you in the morning?”

Jack was pleased Madison didn't protest. A few raindrops began tapping against the cab's windshield. At the same time, an ambulance, with the hi-lo wail of its siren, sped past him. Jack tried in vain to gather his thoughts before calling Mike. He knew that unless something dramatic regarding GNS happened, his best friend wouldn't change his decision to have Tess undergo a C-section and begin Vitracide therapy.

Finally, he placed the call. Their conversation was brief. It was obvious Mike had made up his mind regarding Tess's treatment, and Jack knew it would be impossible to convince him otherwise.

Amongst the many things Jack admired about Mike was his sixth sense when it came to evaluating a complex problem. Even as a kid, Mike rarely made the wrong decision. Deep in thought, Jack absently bit his lower lip. As hard as he tried, he couldn't shake the nagging fear that, in spite of his flawless track record, Mike may have made the first truly bad choice of his life.

As soon as Jack arrived back in his hotel room, he got on his computer. He wanted to get some further information on what Marc had told him regarding the distribution of the chimera cells in the women with GNS. He hadn't been at work for more than a few minutes when he realized he was exhausted. He was just about to wrap things up and climb into bed when his phone rang. He checked the caller ID. It was Lucien from Orlando Memorial calling.

“Hi, Jack. I'm sorry to call you so late, but do you have a few minutes to talk about the biopsy slides?”

“Of course,” he answered, instantly feeling as alert as if he had just awakened from a solid eight-hour sleep.

“I made a new set of slides using alternative staining techniques, and I have to tell you that a number of the
slides bear a very subtle resemblance to the brain tissue of patients with some of the rarer forms of autoimmune diseases.”

Jack was instantly reminded of his team meeting when the possibility that the women suffering from GNS were all chimeras was first raised. He specifically remembered Carolyn, the medical student, informing the group that women with chimerism have a greater chance of having one of the autoimmune diseases.

In a guarded tone he said, “I'm sure you're aware that all of the GNS patients have had a complete set of blood tests to see if they have an autoimmune disease. They've all come up negative.”

“I wasn't aware of that, but it doesn't surprise me. The slides I prepared are not diagnostic of any specific disease in the autoimmune family. All I can say is they have a vague resemblance to the brain tissue of patients with diseases like lupus. If GNS does turn out to be an autoimmune illness, it's going to be a new one that's never been described or seen before, which would account for why all of your blood tests have come up negative.”

“Almost all of the women who died were autopsied. I've read the reports. None of them even hinted at the possibility of an autoimmune disease.”

“I'm not surprised,” Lucien said. “The special techniques and stains we used to look at the young woman's brain biopsy would never be part of a routine autopsy. Plus, the pathologists who did the autopsies were dealing with dead tissue while we studied specimens from viable
brain.” He shook his head a few times. “There's no way our findings would have been observed at any of the autopsies done on the GNS victims.”

Like most physicians, Jack was well aware that one of the most poorly understood groups of diseases known to medical science were the autoimmune ones. Normally, the body makes antibodies to fight off harmful bacteria and viruses. In patients with autoimmune diseases, this important process goes completely haywire. The individual's antibodies, for unknown reasons, are defective and instead of fighting off infection, they attack and severely damage normal tissue. In spite of an enormous amount of sophisticated research, medical science had never figured out why the body attacks its own normal tissues. No cure had ever been found. Various treatments such as chemotherapy and steroids had been tried but the results had been far from encouraging.

Jack stood up and started in a slow pace around his room.

“Do you have a theory why the pathologists at Southeastern didn't make the same observation you did?”

“I don't know. What I'm seeing is the furthest thing from obvious, or maybe they weren't looking for it,” Lucien offered. Jack knew what he was thinking and saw no reason to ask him to explain his comment. “The other reason could be that the findings I'm talking about are extremely thin. It's not unreasonable to theorize that they could have gone unnoticed, or noticed and rejected as a possibility.”

“I know you're a superb pathologist, Lucien, and
please take this with the spirit it's intended. Did you consider asking another pathologist to have a look at the slides?”

Lucien chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I did. I called Jacob Shoemaker in Tampa for a second opinion. He's considered a national authority on autoimmune diseases. I assumed you wanted to keep this matter highly confidential, so I didn't tell him the slides were from a GNS patient. He called me an hour or so ago and agreed with my findings.”

“Well, that's certainly a fascinating observation you two have made.”

“Hopefully this will lead somewhere. It's been a pretty lousy Christmas for a lot of people. Let me know if I can be of any further help.”

“Thanks, Lucien. I owe you one.”

Jack stopped pacing and sat on the end of his bed. He was already quite knowledgeable on the neurologic problems one sees in the autoimmune diseases. Lucien was right about one thing: If GNS was a new autoimmune disease, it certainly didn't resemble any of the others and may not be detectable with the standard diagnostic tests available.

After a few minutes, he went out on his balcony. Looking across the Intracoastal Waterway and out to the Atlantic, he went over every detail of his conversation with Lucien. Even though he had promised Helen to stop all of his team's efforts to discover the cause of GNS, Jack reached for his phone and called Marc.

“Are you still in the hospital?”

“Yeah,” Marc answered with a sigh. “We've been slammed with six new admissions. I'll be here for a while.”

“Do you think you can find some time to check something out for me in the Patient Data Record?”

“Sure . . . but I thought we were no longer . . .”

“This is unofficial . . . and confidential.”

“I understand. What do you need me to do?”

“I want to repeat the autoimmune testing on all of the GNS patients just to make sure we haven't missed something.”

“No problem I'll take care of it right away,” he told Jack. “I assume you heard that Tess Ryan is scheduled for a C-section tomorrow.”

“I heard. I'll see you in the morning.”

Jack tossed his phone on the bed. He then walked over to the desk, turned his computer on again and brought up his preferred medical information website. The website was a convenient resource for finding all the most recent scientific publications on any disease or medical topic. It was the same website he had used to educate himself on chimerism.

Jack would have gone to the hospital himself and done the research he'd asked Marc to do, but he had far more important plans for the next several hours. He continued to face countless uncertainties, but there was one thing that was unshakably true—by sunup he'd know everything that medical science knew about autoimmune diseases.

DECEMBER TWENTIETH

NUMBER OF CASES: 8,265
NUMBER OF DEATHS: 38

Alik Vosky stood in front of the window, staring out at a large high-rise complex to the north. After a minute or so, he walked over to the refrigerator and removed a mini bottle of vodka. He didn't consider himself a drinking man, but today was an exception, even if it was only nine forty-five in the morning. He found a glass, poured the vodka over a few cubes of ice and downed it in one long gulp.

Setting the glass down, he reached into his pocket to make sure the mace pepper spray gun he'd purchased was facing with the handle pointing up.

He hadn't slept very well the night before, his mind cluttered with anticipation regarding his meeting with Jack Wyatt. He had written out in precise detail how the events of their twenty-minute rendezvous would play out. A few minutes earlier he checked the desk drawer to make sure the duct tape and hunting knife were also where he'd have easy access to them. Once he had Dr. Wyatt restrained with the duct tape, he would take five minutes to explain why his death was an absolute necessity. They were both scientists; surely Wyatt would understand.

Vosky sat down on the love seat and waited for Wyatt's arrival. He considered pouring himself another drink, but then dismissed the notion as ill advised. As he expected, at exactly ten o'clock, there were three quick knocks at his door. He came to his feet, crossed the room and opened the door.

“Dr. Wyatt. Thank you so much for coming,” he said with a broad smile, extending his hand. “Please come in. I have all my notes and research set up on the table.” Before closing the door, Vosky took a moment to place the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle.

“I'm honored you asked me to have a look at your work. I truly appreciate the opportunity.”

Vosky motioned to the opposite side of the suite. “As I mentioned on the phone, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I understand you think the entire outbreak is related in some way to the flu vaccine.”

“That's our theory.”

“Well, in that case, it seems as if we've both arrived at the same conclusion,” Vosky stated, a little surprised
Wyatt hadn't asked him how he knew about his flu vaccine theory. As far as he knew, the theory had not been made public. “I've read about Dr. Sinclair's virus theory, and I have to tell you, I believe he's wrong. Please, have a seat on the couch, I'll get my notes and I'll explain to you why.”

“If you don't mind, I injured my back a few days ago. I'd prefer to stand.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you're feeling better soon.” Vosky returned from the table and handed him a stack of papers. “So tell me, Dr. Wyatt. How did you arrive at your conclusion that the flu vaccine is the direct cause of GNS?”

“We were lucky.”

“You're being too modest,” he said as a mysterious smile spread across his face. “It took me years to figure out what you did in just a week or so.”

“I'm not quite sure I understand. How could you have been working on this for years? The first cases of GNS were only diagnosed a couple of weeks ago.”

“That's true. But based on research I conducted three years ago in Russia, I was able to create the disease in mice. You see, Dr. Wyatt, I engineered the entire thing.”

“I apologize, Doctor, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.”

“Of course not. How could you? I genetically engineered GNS but I had no way of causing the epidemic in pregnant women until I figured out how to use the flu vaccine as the method of infection and transmission.” His smile broadened. “Don't look surprised, Dr. Wyatt. I
assure you, everything I say is true.” He pointed to the table. “It's all there in my notes. Unfortunately, I doubt there's a handful of scientists in the United States with the intellectual capacity to understand them.” Vosky casually sighed. “Everything was progressing just as planned until you got involved. As much as I respect you and admire your work, I'm sure you can appreciate why I can't possibly allow you to continue your research. If you should somehow stumble across a means to stop the spread of GNS . . . well, it would drastically upset my plans.”

Vosky casually slid his hand into his pocket. Finding the mace pepper gun, he began to slide it out. He only looked down for a split second, but it was then that he felt a crushing grip on his wrist. Before he could offer any resistance, the man he believed to be Dr. Jack Wyatt jerked his hand out of his pocket. In one motion, he stepped under Vosky's arm, twisted his wrist and took up a position behind him. In the process, he locked Vosky's arm in an inescapable bar hold. A jolt of upward pressure on his wrist was all that it took to send the mace pepper gun sailing from his grip. Vosky cried out in pain, feeling as if the tendons in his wrist and elbow were being snapped and sheared off. His scream was still hanging in the air when the door to the hotel room crashed open. Four men dressed in plainclothes raced across the room. Five seconds later, Vosky was completely subdued.

“Dr. Vosky. I'm not Dr. Wyatt. My name is Westenson. I'm a special agent with the FBI,” he informed him as two of the other agents finished handcuffing him. “We're
going to get you the help you need, but right now we have to place you under arrest.”

When Vosky was securely in custody, he was read his rights and led away. One of the agents present was Maxime Barbier of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He had remained behind the other men and had not physically participated in the arrest.

Westenson reached into the inner pocket of his sports coat to check his recording device.

“Thank you,” Barbier said.

“We should be the ones thanking you. You figured out Vosky would eventually show up in Florida,” Westenson said. “When were you planning on heading back to Canada?”

“In a couple of days. I want to make sure there are no loose ends regarding extradition.”

“Do you think he'll ever stand trial in Canada?”

“I doubt it. I spoke with the lead psychiatrist on the case last night. His team's conclusion is that Vosky fits the pattern of a classic paranoid schizophrenic. Obviously, they reached that conclusion without interviewing and examining him. So, I'm sure the first order of business will be to get him into a psychiatric facility for an evaluation and to begin treatment. I don't know what will happen after that.”

“Based on what occurred here this morning, I would have to assume in his delusional state he would have killed Dr. Wyatt.”

By this time a team of forensic technicians had entered
the room. Having signed out to his partner, Westenson motioned to Barbier and they left.

“I think the FBI owes Dr. Wyatt a personal thanks for his cooperation,” Westenson said. “Without him informing us about the phone call he received from Vosky, this could have ended in a disaster. I think I'll take a ride over to the hospital later to thank him.”

“I'd like to go with you if you don't mind.”

“Of course,” Westenson said, as they started down the hall. “I don't know about you, but this kind of work always makes me hungry. How about getting something to eat? The FBI is treating.”

With a grin, Barbier extended his hand. The doors to the elevator opened and they stepped on.